Detecting peptidic drugs, drug candidates and analogs in sports doping: current status and future directions

With the growing availability of mature systems and strategies in biotechnology and the continuously expanding knowledge of cellular processes and involved biomolecules, human sports drug testing has become a considerably complex field in the arena of analytical chemistry. Proving the exogenous origin of peptidic drugs and respective analogs at lowest concentration levels in biological specimens (commonly blood, serum and urine) of rather limited volume is required to pursue an action against cheating athletes. Therefore, approaches employing chromatographic-mass spectrometric, electrophoretic, immunological and combined test methods have been required and developed. These allow detecting the misuse of peptidic compounds of lower (such as growth hormone-releasing peptides, ARA-290, TB-500, AOD-9604, CJC-1295, desmopressin, luteinizing hormone-releasing hormones, synacthen, etc.), intermediate (e.g., insulins, IGF-1 and analogs, 'full-length' mechano growth factor, growth hormone, chorionic gonadotropin, erythropoietin, etc.) and higher (e.g., stamulumab) molecular mass with desired specificity and sensitivity. A gap between the technically possible detection and the day-to-day analytical practice, however, still needs to be closed.